British supermarket group Sainsbury's has reported an encouraging Christmas season after putting its restructuring on hold to focus on festive demand.
The group, which is the middle of an overhaul of its UK operation, achieved like-for-like sales growth of 2% in the four weeks to January 3.
The performance - which strips out the effect of new store openings - is an improvement on the rest of the third quarter trading period when sales were 0.1% ahead.
Sainsbury's said sales in the seven days before Christmas had been particularly strong with 43 stores taking more than £2m.
The showing from the UK's third largest supermarket chain comes after similar positive comments from rivals Asda and Morrison about Christmas trading. Tesco is due to update the market tomorrow.
